


The Well of Maenventon

by astrokath



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Cornwall, Future Fic, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Post-Canon, Supernatural Elements, wild magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:36:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5397962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrokath/pseuds/astrokath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer of 2016 was a waterlogged disappointment for most of the south west. But when a landslide in the famous Nanskilly Gardens reveals a mysterious archaeological find, Professor Jane Halliwell wastes no time in heading for Cornwall, determined to discover its secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Well of Maenventon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dustseeing (dustseeing)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustseeing/gifts).



> Thank you, Dustseeing, for your excellent prompt. It was a real pleasure to write this story for you, and to indulge my own love of blending weird mysticism with reality. I've taken a number of liberties with the local landscape, mythology and history of Cornwall, but I've also drawn on my own familiarity with the area quite a bit. I hope the mixture works for you!

**Part I: The Lost Valley**

When news of the landslide broke, Jane’s first thought was of her husband. Aaron had always loved Nanskilly Gardens, and the idea that she might never again experience the place as they’d known it together was like losing a part of him all over again.  Her second thought, only a little later, was of an incredibly speculative, dead-end piece of research that she’d given up on almost a decade previously. It was unlikely that anything would come of it, but she sent a brief message to one of her contacts in Exeter all the same.

Forty-eight hours later she was on the M5, heading for a cheap B&B in Trewissick. They’d only been sent rough details of the Maenventon find, but Nick and Aderyn had spent the entire journey down bouncing theory after theory between them. Nick was Jane’s newest PhD student: still rather wet behind the ears, but keen to succeed, even if everyday practicalities sometimes passed him by. Addie, on the other hand, had seen it all before. She was a solid researcher, a colleague from across the road in archaeology, with no fear of the necessary months or years of grubbing around in the dirt for the slightest new result. She also had a mind that could identify crucial details with pinpoint accuracy.  Shock of pink hair aside, she’d always reminded Jane of her daughter.

“A grave marker,” Nick said, holding one of the pictures up to the window. “Or a… yeah! A proper political _statement,_ like Men Scryfa!”

Jane and Addie shared an indulgent smile. Nick’s puppyish enthusiasm could get a little wearying at times, but they both agreed on his potential.

“Are you going to let him down, or shall I?” Addie asked.

“Gently please,” Jane murmured, but Addie was already off.

“…Because it’s probably just another Neolithic remnant, no different to any of the other holed stones around.”

“Come on, Addie, you’re not saying this is just some kind of coincidence? Right where the stories say the Well used to be?”

“The Maenventon story might have nothing to do with it at all.  And even if it does, it’s most likely just accreted elements of other stories over the millennia.”

“Anyone would think you didn’t _want_ to find anything special there!”

Addie shrugged. “Been burned before. Might not even be a proper holed stone at all - just a fortuitously shaped lump of greenstone or granite, pressed into duty by superstitious 18th century locals as a ward against domestic disasters and cantankerous faeries.”

“Or,” Jane said, “Nick might be right. We may have a real find on our hands here, something we _can_ tie to a specific time and place.”

“And then spend the next decade arguing with the Oxford lot over,” Addie added with a chuckle.”

The debate continued right the way into Cornwall, with diversions into the quality of the local beer, the inevitable roadworks, and a few even wilder postulations on the nature of the Maenventon Stone.  Jane didn’t think Nick was at all serious about it being a new addition to the local Arthuriana, one that might bridge the gap between the Trewissick Grail, the Kemare Head menhirs and the Drustanus Stone of Fowey… not when it was far more likely that he was just waxing romantic in the hope of winding Aderyn up.  But by the time they arrived at Nanskilly, the feeling of anticipation, of being on the verge of something unprecedented and exciting, had clearly rubbed off on everyone.

Jane entered the gardens with a spring in her step. The rain was falling heavily, much as it had done for the past three weeks, but even in the rain Nanskilly was a truly beautiful place. They’d missed the best of the rhododendrons by months, but Jane could easily fill an entire day wandering the paths that wove through the landscape, from tropical valley to kitchen garden, through forested slopes and meandering parkland. She hadn’t visited for years, not since Aaron’s death, but unless her memory was fooling her it had only grown more beautiful in the interim.  The more distant reaches of the gardens would be quiet, too. The wet weather had driven the tourists off the beaches, but from all she could see they were mostly keeping to the boardwalks and the gravel, and the inevitably overflowing tea-room.

Promising herself that there’d be plenty of time to revisit her memories over the weeks ahead, Jane beckoned for Addie and Nick to join her.  They’d been sheltering beneath a towering yew tree beside the entrance, Addie hunkered down into the depths of her threadbare parka, while Nick studied one of the garden plans they’d picked up at the main entrance, comparing it to Jane’s old OS map that they’d brought down in the car with them. He had a look of almost giddy excitement on his face, and Jane had no trouble imagining what was going through his mind. A new find, the acclaim of his peers… no, of experts all around the world! And his PhD and multiple publications to follow, a fast-track to a lectureship, and perhaps even a book! No, these days it’d be film-rights. She smothered a grin.

“What’s the plan, boss?” Addie asked, hands still deeply wedged in her coat pockets.

“They said they’d be expecting us down in the valley,” Jane said, raising her voice for Nick’s benefit - he was still struggling to return the map to its original folds.

“There’s a back route running from behind the nursery we can take,” Nick suggested as he came over, gesturing in completely the wrong direction.  “Then we can take a short-cut across Highmoor, and pick up one of the main paths into the Lost Valley.” 

“Cornwall, land of tautologies,” Addie muttered. “Give it here.” She yanked the smaller of the two maps from Nick’s hands, turned it ninety degrees, and gave a confident nod. “It’s _this_ way. Honestly, what do they teach you lot these days?”

"You should know, Dr Aderyn Pritchard-Jones!"

“Students!” Addie rolled her eyes. “You don’t know how lucky you are! Coming, Jane?”

They were all three of them wearing walking boots and sensible trousers, but Jane remembered the slope on the far side of Highmoor being boggy at the best of times, and the university frowned on expense claims for dry-cleaning.  “I’ll take the scenic route, and meet you down there. Old legs, you know.”

 

* * *

  

Jane took one of the steeper routes into the valley. The steps had been kept in good repair and even in the rain the gravel made sound footing. Her feet made a steady _crunch, crunch_ as she walked, though not so loud that they drowned out the heavy patter of rain on foliage. She did her best to empty her mind of everything but the landscape - it wasn’t easy, but she didn’t want to prejudice her first impressions of the Maenventon site with wish fulfilment - either Nick’s, or her own. 

As she descended deeper into the gardens, she became more and more convinced that there was something _missing_. The air held the scent of ocean air and lush growth - a smell she’d recognise anywhere - mixed with a faint hint of wood smoke. The banana plants and tropical flowers lining the south-facing slopes of the valley might not be native species, but even so, Nanskilly felt quintessentially Cornish.  A chainsaw was buzzing somewhere nearby. They’d lost a number of trees in the recent storms, she remembered. The tall Scots pines that dominated the gardens’ eastern boundary had survived more or less intact, as had the rookeries that occupied them.

 _That_ was what it was, Jane realised. Birdsong.  She hadn’t heard even a sparrow since-

A loud _caw_ interrupted her thoughts, almost as if the bird had heard her thinking.  Well, that just went to show how ridiculous she was being!

The noise had come from somewhere off to her right, where the path ahead was obscured by towering holly bushes, thick with a multitude of pale green berries. Jane continued onwards, curious. Beyond the hollies, a gnarled and ancient oak tree rose from the centre of the path. A man wearing a high-vis vest stood in front of it, gesticulating angrily at something. A blackbird, Jane saw, perched in one of the lower branches.

The man grabbed a fallen stick from the side of the path, and lobbed it at the tree. “Gi’ off with you!” he yelled.

It clattered against the branch the blackbird was sitting on, but the bird didn’t even ruffle a feather. It cawed again, loudly, and the man visibly flinched.

“Well, you don’t see _that_ every day!” Jane said. “Is it sick, do you think?”

The man grunted something indecipherable, but at that moment Jane was far more interested in the bird. It didn’t _look_ sick. But there was something in its demeanour, in the tilt of its head and the look in its unfathomable black eyes as it gazed directly back at her…

Jane had a sudden feeling that this was something she was _meant_ to see.  That the bird had stayed where it was for the sole purpose of waiting for _her_.

And then it _did_ move, dropping from its perch to a swift and sudden burst of flight.  Jane froze, rooted to the spot, as the blackbird passed bare inches to the right of her head, the down-stroke of one of its wings brushing the collar of her coat.

“Bloody thing’s got some nerve!” said the man.  “Though I s’pose it’s better’n havin’ ‘em pester the customers up at the café”  He huffed noisily, and eyed her with suspicion. “Not much point _you_ carrying on this way. Closed for maintenance this end of valley, we are. Storm damage, see.”

“I’m here to examine the Maenventon find. It _is_ this way, isn’t it?”

“Your name?”

“Professor Halliwell.”

The expression on his face turned briefly to outright doubt as he fished a walkie-talkie out his pocket. “Rowe speaking. Got a Professor ‘ere to see the stone. Yeah. Yeah, Halliwell, that’s right, but I thought we were expecting three?”  He glanced across at her, the request for information clear.

“My colleagues cut across Highmoor.”

The man -- Rowe -- tutted and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, no, never mind that. ‘pparently they’re coming over Highmoor. Yeah. Better get one of the quads ready, eh? Cheers, see you in five.”

Slipping the walkie-talkie back inside his jacket, he flashed Jane a grin. “Welcome to Nanskilly, Professor Halliwell,” he said, suddenly all charm. “And ‘ave we got something to show you!”

 

* * *

 

The site was a wound of fallen trees, churned mud and stone against the hillside. The landslide having happened only a few days past, there were still several teams hard at work staking in temporary fencing to stabilise the upper parts of the slope, as well as clearing debris from the lower valley. Rowe introduced her to the site foreman, then disappeared on a quadbike to rescue Nick and Addie from their ill-advised short-cut. It was a good half hour before they reappeared, Addie muddied to the hips and Nick even worse off.  By then, Jane had a much better idea of what they were dealing with, and it was everything that she’d always hoped to find.  Not just any old holed stone, but a full ceremonial artefact.  The carvings had grown indistinct with age, and gave an impression of a pattern that was always ever so slightly out of view, but given enough photos they’d soon piece it all together.

“Usual routine, Jane?” Addie asked, already removing the lens-cap from her camera.

Jane nodded. She’d taken a few photos of her own already, but they were a poor substitute for the reality. “Standard aspects, and see if you can get better contrast from the east side.  If not, I’ll ask someone for some spots.”

“I’m thinking a panorama from up-slope, too. But not until _after_ I’ve given this lovely a proper looking over.”  

Knowing that Addie would be fully occupied with her own thoughts for some time to come, Jane turned her full attention to her student. “Nick, talk me through what you’re seeing.”

“It looks old enough, but it’s not really much of a well, is it? I mean, I can see how the name came about, but…” Nick trailed off, frowning, then dropped down on to all fours beside her. Quite heedless of the mud, he pressed his head against the ground, the better to inspect the stone from that level. “Fuck _me_! Is that Latin?”

“Some of it.” Jane translated on the fly. “ _Something-or-other breath of the dawn, something-something sanctify?_ The way it spirals like that, I’m pretty sure there’ll be more on the other side, too. But look here.” She traced a finger in a loose oval in the air above the stone. “ _This_ is definitely _not_ Latin.”

“What is it then?” Nick asked. Absently, he wiped at his cheek, smearing the mud even more.  “That’s well weird.”

Jane wasn’t entirely sure herself. For some reason, none of her sketches had come out right yet, and if she stared at it too long her eyes started aching. Probably the odd reflections coming off the pooled water in the stone’s centre.  She shivered, feeling a sudden sense of unease, then immediately felt foolish. It was only Addie, standing behind her.

“Looks like a PhD thesis, three or four research grants and a decade of publications to me!” Addie said. “You lucky, _lucky_ sod!”

 

* * *

 

 

**Part II: A spell by the sea**

 

 _The Golden Cup_ wouldn’t have been Jane’s first choice of pub for the evening, or even her third or fourth, but at least it was warm and dry, and not completely overrun with disgruntled tourists. The decor was a bizarre mix of mock Arthuriana, suspended fishing-floats, and brightly coloured seascapes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a toddler’s bedroom. Additional _ambience_ was provided by an ancient stereo not quite fully tuned into a local radio station. Addie had arrived early enough to grab a table in an out-of-the-way corner, and what it lacked in stability was more than made up for by it being furthest from the speakers behind the bar.

Perhaps inevitably, given the surroundings, the conversation soon turned to Jane’s exploits as a child.

“It was _not_ grave-robbing!” Jane protested.  “Come on, Addie, didn’t you ever make up treasure maps as a kid?”

“Nah, my generation were too busy watching telly, weren’t we?  Of course I bloody did, but I never actually _found_ anything with them.”

“I did!” Nick volunteered.

Addie rocked back on her stool. “Seriously?”

He grinned coyly back at her. “My neighbour three doors down’s stash of weed. Best. Summer. Ever.”

“Treasure maps _and_ weed? You either had a really weird childhood, or an _utterly_ geeky adolescence.”

“Who says it wasn’t both?” Jane suggested.

“And there speaks the expert!” said Addie.  “So. Without side-tracking us this time, Jane, tell Nick about how you and your brothers found the _Famous Trewissick Grail_.”

“Oh, alright then.” Jane smiled warmly at them both. She didn’t make a habit of giving the story in full - the details seemed to drift between tellings (though she supposed that was true of all childhood memories), and it seemed weirdly indulgent to take any credit for what was really pure happenstance. But over the years, it had grown into a kind of tradition, a gift she shared with each new PhD student in turn.  And, just like all the rest, Nick lapped it up eagerly.

“...though I do feel awful for setting such a bad example,” Jane finished.

Nick frowned into the last inches of his pint. “Bad example?”

“Oh hell, yes!”

Addie lifted her chin from her hands, freeing them up to count on her fingers. “One, three kids, _entirely_ unaccompanied by adults, go wandering off down the coastline in search of a figment of their imagination. Two, they suddenly decide: ‘ _Why not go caving as well?_ ’. Three: grail or no grail, they end up stuck there with the tide coming in!”

“Ah.”

“Mmm. Almost as foolish as a certain project-student, I recall,” Jane chided softly. Addie had the grace to flush.”

“Oh-ho!” Nick leaned forward, a gleam in his eye. “This would be the famous _bog_ incident that no-one will tell me about, isn’t it?”

“My round, I think,” Addie said, rising quickly from her seat and making a break for the bar.

“Nuh-uh, you’re not getting off that easily!”  Nick followed her, in hot pursuit of the promised anecdote.

Sipping her wine, Jane left them to it.  Judging by the crowd at the bar, they wouldn’t be back in a hurry. She let her mind drift, floating between observations of the pub’s clientele and her memories of the Trewissick of the past, or at least as much of them as she could recall. Those early holidays had always been a little hazy - even the day they’d found the Grail. Her sharpest memories all came from later: the half-term holiday in ‘78 when Simon somehow ended up giving directions to a naval frigate, postgrad research trips, that walk over the cliffs when Aaron had proposed, eating ice-cream from the shop by the harbour, and long days down on the beach with little Agnes.  So much had changed since then. The ice-cream was even better now, but the tat in all the shops was just the same as ever.  Buckets and spades, kites and surfboards, postcards and paintings and plastic replica grails.  And the heart of the place? Well, that was just plain gone. Fishing quotas and economics, demographic shifts. The last of the fishermen had retired years back, Trewissick’s newer generations working as boatmen or hoteliers or hairdressers or surf-instructors over at Pentewan.  Gardens were the big thing for Cornwall these days, gardens and food, and the indefatigable surfers.

Jane glared at the grails embossed on the pub’s bar-food menu with disdain. Trewissick had made a bigger deal of it than the establishment ever had. A flash in the pan find by a set of kids, but it still pulled in the New Age pounds at a ridiculous rate, while the greater historical value of Trewissick lay lost and forgotten. Fourteen hundred years, the Greenwitch rite had been happening here in Trewissick, and all it had taken was one drunken idiot with relationship issues and the clout of the Health and Safety Executive for the whole thing to shrivel up and die.  Nothing more than a meaningless anachronism, they’d called it in the St Austell Packet. The watered-down version the parish council had replaced it with had lasted less than five years before vanishing completely.

No longer in any mood for conversation, Jane typed Nick and Addie a quick text.

_heading back to b &b. remembered a paper that might be worth checking out. c u at breakfast._

 

* * *

 

Outside, the shadows of evening had come early to Trewissick. The sun was falling rapidly away towards the northwest, and except for a small queue outside the Chinese takeaway, a rather sweaty jogger, and a group of teens clustered under a bus shelter, the village was quiet. Overhead, the sky was a patchwork of colour and cloud - the weather was the best they’d had since arriving in Cornwall, but Jane knew it probably wouldn’t last the night.

She made her way down the High Street, wondering if a few minutes by the harbour might improve her mood. The valley opened out a little more there, and if she was lucky, she might catch the last of the sun. In that respect, she found herself proved right. But as soon as she stepped onto the first of the sunlit cobblestones, she felt a sudden chill.

Strange. Jane stopped in her tracks, and began buttoning up her raincoat. She was halfway through when she was interrupted by a whimpering growl.

There weren’t many other people about, so it was easy enough to identify the source of the sound. A Yorkshire terrier - she’d never been much enamoured by the breed - cowering under a bench, while its owner tried in vain to haul it out. Well, presumably its owner, but ‘old lady in sensible shoes and a headscarf’ definitely fit the usual profile. The poor thing was obviously terrified out of its wits, though Jane couldn’t imagine anything obvious that might have frightened it. Should she go over and help coax it out, or would that stress it further?

Before Jane could make a decision, the old lady won the battle of wills. The little dog growled, teeth bared, before darting off to the far end of its lead. It strained to get away, rear end distorted with discomfort.

“Oh, leave it out, Bry!” the old woman called, yanking the dog back to heel. “I don’t know what’s got into you!”

The dog looked appealingly up at Jane as the pair passed, still visibly terrified, but the woman paid her no heed at all, not even when Jane bid her a polite ‘good evening’. That wasn’t at all like the friendly locals Jane remembered.

And that was when she noticed the bird perched on the woman’s shoulder, partly concealed by the patterned fabric of her headscarf. A starling, dark feathers speckled with puce in the fading sunlight, its claws locked deeply into the woman’s shoulder. It turned its head to stare back at Jane, its black eyes flat and emotionless, like a shark. It was still watching her as the old lady disappeared around the curve of the street.

Jane shivered again. Strange. Very, _very_ strange.

Still, one didn’t become a professor of arch&anth without picking up certain habits of observation and hypothesis.  Jane drew back into the shelter of an estate agency window, and made a show of pulling out her phone and moving her fingers across the screen between glances back and forth along the street.  Fifteen more people walked past her over the next ten minutes, in the company of four more starlings, three sparrows, a blue tit, a chaffinch, two crows and a black-headed gull. There’d been nothing to differentiate the three people whose birds she hadn’t spotted from the rest, except that she hadn’t got a clear enough view of them to be certain there was nothing there.

The thought gave her pause. She slipped her phone back into her pocket, and cautiously reached up to check her own shoulders. Nothing on her right. Her left… nothing there either, she thought, up until the moment when her fingers brushed against something alien.

Jerking her hand away, Jane stifled a shriek. But she had to be sure! Fingers shaking, she probed the collar of her coat carefully, inch by inch. There _was_ something there. Not a bird, but _something_. She closed her fingers defiantly around it.

It was a feather, that was all.  A single feather, caught tight in the fabric of her coat. It must have belonged to that blackbird from earlier, she supposed, but how come she hadn’t noticed it before?

She pulled the feather free, and frowned at her empty fingers. There was nothing there! Had she dropped it? But no, she could still _feel_ its shaft, pressing against her fingertips. Tentatively, she brought her other hand up, and felt for the feather’s invisible edge. It was the lightest of sensations, but definitely not something she was imagining. Squinting, she held it up to the sky, and was rewarded by a faint shimmer of translucent night.

Well. What to do now? she mused. One thing was certain: if she dropped it, she’d never be able to find it again.  And that, she realised with a sudden instinctive flash of fear, was something she _really_ didn’t want to do. Very carefully, Jane threaded the feather through the uppermost of her coat’s buttonholes, and checked that it was secure.

Logic dictated what came next.  She backtracked through the village, seeing birds everywhere, right up until she crossed back into the shadows. Further up High Street, the kids were still loitering in the bus shelter. The old lady with the yorkie had joined them, but now it was in the middle of a full-body wag of delight, eating chips out of one of the kids’ hands. 

There were no birds on any of them now. Jane was sure of it.

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later, Jane was fairly certain that she’d mapped out the boundary of the mystery, though she was no closer at all to understanding it. She started back towards the harbour. That was the epicentre, and if there was anything more to be discovered, chances were good that she’d find it there.

The closer she got to the sea, the stranger people were acting, moving silently or not at all. There was a thickness to the air, and the usual aroma of the harbour, of salt and silt, was tangled up with the smells of methylated spirits and burnt stone.  It was low water, and the boats leaned all askew in the mud amid a network of ropes and chains, seaweed and buoys.  And there in the middle of the harbour was a man, knee deep in mud. He was… doing _something_ … to a tree?  Jane squinted, no longer trusting her eyes. There were branches in his hands, and more on the ground beside him. Seaweed, too, and a mess of rope or cord, strung with flotsam, weaving between the boats and in and out of the mud around him, almost like knot-work.  It reminded her of something, though she couldn’t recall quite what. Something she’d seen before, in a book, or a sketch?

What _was_ he doing?

Jane watched as he placed another branch in the harbour floor.  The mud was up to his thighs now. It _was_ mud, wasn’t it?  Everything about it looked like normal mud, except that every time she blinked, it seemed to change shape.

Well, if she couldn’t trust the evidence of her eyes, why not try for something with more permanence? Besides, what she could see of the pattern of debris he’d woven into the harbour floor was far too complex to trust to memory alone. Jane unbuttoned her coat and reached into the inner pocket for her phone. Holding it out in front of her, she took a handful of quick photos, increasing the zoom from shot to shot. It wasn’t an ideal vantage point, so she decided to try a spot further round the harbour, where her view would be less obscured.

She’d barely taken half a dozen steps when the man in the harbour suddenly stiffened.

Jane froze in her tracks, until some instinct prompted her to glance downwards. There was a shimmer in the air beside her, dancing from side to side in a zig-zag descent, and a feeling of ever increasing unease in her guts. She clutched at the buttonhole where she’d placed the invisible feather, and found it empty.

The shimmer passed into shadow, and vanished entirely. “Damn!” Jane swore, falling to a crouch. She might not know _why_ she needed to keep hold of the feather, but she was very, _very_ sure that it was important she did. She scrabbled at the cobbles, heart thumping in her chest, trying to find it again before, before....

Someone bellowed, four angry syllables in a language she didn’t know.

Jane looked up, saw the man in the harbour, face fierce with fury. Shadows thickened to solidity around him, but not before she recognised his face: it was Rowe, from Nanskilly.

He raised an arm, pointed at her. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear the words, intelligible or otherwise. There was a rushing in her ears, a wind she couldn’t feel, the sound of waves and wings, the cries of gulls and crows.

And footsteps, she realised, heavy on the ground and growing ever louder. Behind her.

Jane turned; saw someone new. Another man: tall, dark, hand outstretched as he ran. A blackbird flew beside him and the storm came behind.

Something in her broke, and she found the strength to run.

The storm broke around her, swallowing her whole.

 

* * *

 

The forest was green and deep.  Leaves rustled overhead, filtering the sunlight into rippling shimmers. Jane hung suspended in the midst of the falling light, watching it play across the ground beneath her, and the pillars of ivy and kelp to every side. There was a figure on the ground: a reclining woman shaped of mud and grass, with sea-anemones for her lips and waving fronds of montbretia for her hair.

Jane swam lower, parting the heavy air with her hands.  The swell pushed back at her, keeping time with the giant figure’s breath. The darkness grew, and a sense of pressure, and potency.

And then the figure stirred, shimmering black and green and silver. She wasn’t made of mud at all, Jane realised, but a multitude of fish.

 _Come to me,_ the goddess said. _The one who would seek the power of my blessing must give me what I am owed.  It has been long, daughter. Longlonglonglong._

“I don’t understand.”

 _But you do. Oh, you do!_ There was a note of cruelty in her words now, of strength, and impatience. _It comes, daughter. The time when the old bargain stands or falls._

“ _What_ bargain?”

The goddess laughed, deep and barbed. _The Wild Magic knows only the one, pitiful human child._ _But I give you this gift_ . _Your feet are on the path. You have but to walk it._

The ocean pressed hard against her, grasping fingers of thorny wood that clutched and enveloped her completely. Hawthorn and rowan bloomed before her eyes, bright against the darkness. Jane opened her mouth, gasping for air.

The sea rushed in, salt and cold and choking.

 

* * *

 

 

 **Part III: Awakenings**  

 

The realisation that she had _not_ had a normal evening didn’t come back to her until Jane was almost to the B&B’s breakfast room. She drew in a deep breath, and leaned back against the wall with a sigh.  What a _strange_ collection of memories!  And unless she was very much mistaken, not one bit of it real. Except, she didn’t have anything more plausible to fill its place.

Frowning to herself, she tried to make some sense of the mess.  She remembered leaving The Golden Cup - nothing strange about that. And that drowning nightmare was a variation on a very old theme - she dreamt of the Tethys legends at least once a year; had done so ever since her days as a graduate student at Oxford. But the weirdness in the village, and the birds? The man planting trees in the harbour? The stranger with the blackbird who’d brought the storm?

Maybe there _was_ a way to resolve the mystery. If things _had_ happened as she remembered, unlikely as that was, the evidence would be on her phone, wouldn’t it? And if not, well, Cornwall wasn’t so far from civilisation that it didn’t have doctors. Best to make an emergency appointment in that case.  She’d never hear the end of it from Simon otherwise.

Twisting on the spot, Jane hurried back upstairs again. Her phone, her phone… where was it? Not in her coat pocket, where her memories said it should be. No, that’d be too simple. She scanned her room, and finally spotted it charging on the dresser.

Jane reached out to unplug it, and stopped with a shiver. Wedged underneath it was a long, black feather.

“Okaaaay,” she murmured to herself. “Though that doesn’t mean I’m _not_ going mad.”

There was only one way to be sure. Jane picked up feather and phone, and swiped through to her camera.

And there it was, exactly as she remembered. The harbour. Rowe, or someone very much like him. A pattern of flotsam on the ground. And if _that_ had been real enough to digitise, what did that say about the rest of it?

Eyes firmly fixed on the screen of her phone, Jane reached for her bag and slipped the feather inside before feeling around for a pad of paper and a pen. Opening the pad to the blank pages at the back, she started sketching. She might not have her brother’s talent, but she could do well enough.  There were a few areas that she hadn’t been able to capture with her phone, but after half an hour she was happy that she’d pieced together as much of the pattern as possible, and even more certain than ever that she’d seen it - or at least something like it - somewhere before. Jane traded phone for laptop, and brought up a browser.

Unfortunately, the local wifi coverage proved as uncooperative as ever.  She texted Nick and Addie, letting them know to go on to Nanskilly without her, then grabbed her bag and headed back downstairs. Bypassing the breakfast room, she made straight for the carpark out the back. There’d be better reception - and better coffee, too - in St Austell.

 

* * *

 

The rain had, once again, driven all the tourists inland. Some, against anyone’s better judgement, or perhaps forewarned of heavy crowds at Eden, had chosen to spend the day in St Austell, and Jane spent far too long simply fighting the traffic. It was a bleak and depressing market town, with little going for it beyond a mildly refurbished shopping centre with a few newly fashionable shops, a reasonably decent brewery, and some more interesting than scenic walks up the Gover valley into the china clay district.  Jane made for the town library, tucked away behind the train line.  If the internet failed her there, too, some obscure local text or the town librarian might not.

Trusting her subconscious to have been doing _something_ useful by sending her a nightmare, she started with the sources she’d drawn on for her thesis - the Greenwitch mythos. Most of the really useful material was stored as hard-copy in a box on the top shelf in her office - she hadn’t unpacked it since moving in almost a decade back - but she kept some of the better imagery digitised, in case she needed to call on it for a talk.  There was a link to it somehow, she was sure of it, a link that went beyond the involvement of woven branches and the sea… Unless it was only the fact that whatever had happened was inextricably associated with Trewissick?

The first fruitless hour stretched into a second, and Jane decided to dig deeper.  Knotwork, weaving, sand... well _that_ was a great big signpost pointing to the Tregeagle story.  Though that felt far too recent, and probably too Christian to boot. She needed something _older_ , more primitive. Even King Mark might be off… but perhaps there was a seed there. The Greenwitch, King Mark. Trewissick and Kemare Head.  The standing stones… old as the hills, almost, as the quoits and menhirs and circles and settlements… Dammit, how long since she’d dabbled in any pre-history theories beyond Addie's immediate work? She was _woefully_ out of touch, and would hardly find what she needed in an aging local library!

Jane leaned back in her rickety plastic chair, and stared over her shoulder at the shelves. Did they even have a history section here, or was it all trashy romance novels and reference books for technophobic cruciverbalists?

“Pah,” she muttered to herself. “Come on, Jane, this isn’t how a professor gets things done!”

And yet… it hadn’t been a professor who’d found the Trewissick Grail, or been so moved by mystique of the Greenwitch that she’d built a lifetime’s work around it.

Maybe… maybe she didn’t _need_ to make the connections yet. Maybe all she needed to do was accept what she’d seen, and trust that it would lead her to the right conclusion in the end.  _Your feet are on the path,_ the Tethys of her dreams had told her.

So where had her path led her so far?  To Nanskilly, and all she’d seen there. The Maenventon stone, old and forbidding, part still covered in mud and debris and the rest a miracle of graven script, sweeping and curling in a half-seen infinite loop. The birds in Trewissick, and Rowe in the harbour. The stranger with the blackbird. Dreams. Memories.

And an out-of-the-way, market-town library.

 _My feet are on the path,_ Jane reminded herself. _I have but to walk it._

She worked her way along the shelves to the ‘Local Interest’ section. Walking routes, tales of mine and fishing disasters, cookery books. And standing stones and neolithic monuments, celtic crosses, old ways and crossroads and bottomless lakes. A core myth, an archetype. A seed.  She pulled book after book off the shelf in turn, flicking through pages, closing, re-shelving, until she suddenly felt another burst of certainty.  _Stories of The Saints’ Way,_ read the title of the next book she touched.  She opened it up, letting the pages part at random.

And there it was, a pair of grainy black and white photos: one showing a poorly reproduced image of a petroglyph, the other of rocks in a moorland setting, a solitary dark bird perched on a stone in the foreground.

 _The Logan Stone and Petroglyphs of Helman Tor,_ read the caption. 

 

 

* * *

  

Jane drove up through Lanlivery, trusting her own sense of direction over the satnav’s for the last few miles along the narrow, unclassified roads. On a better day, she might have found aspects of the landscape beautiful, but under the steadily darkening clouds the only adjective that truly seemed to fit was ‘bleak’.  Scrub and grassland formed a patchy skin over the ancient granite ridge, the wealth of the earth diminished from days gone by. _And yet_ , Jane thought to herself, _human hands had shaped this part of Cornwall for over five thousand years, back to the bronze age and before_. Here and there the shapes of prehistoric settlements or mine-workings could still be traced by a well-trained or particularly imaginative set of eyes, but the place held scant appeal for most modern humans - the moorland might be a treasure-trove for entomologists, but it was also boggy, and there were far better sites for walking or climbing elsewhere in the vicinity.

Having found the car park, Jane swapped her everyday shoes for walking boots and started towards the tor. She bypassed the faded information board, preferring to make her own assessment of the lay of the land, and made quick work of the ascent. There was a trig point at the top, its white paint flaking on the more weather-worn side. Using it as support for her elbows, Jane propped her chin in her hands and studied the view intently.  There were no shadows to give clue to the cardinal points, but the shape of a distant parish church did well enough - tower to the west, as always.

Slowly, the shape of the ancient earthworks fell into place.  The tor had been well fortified, back in its day, particularly towards the east.  Understandably, too: the dark ages were aptly named, and Cornwall’s multitude of saints had mostly earned their heavenly status the hard way. But even in pre-Christian times, Helman Tor had been a place of significance, and sanctuary. The bronze-age petroglyphs attested to that.  Jane hadn’t found the lurid interpretation in _Stories of the Saints’ Way_ particularly convincing - there were parts of it which would have put even the battiest of emeritus professors in British Pre-History to shame - but she was willing allow the author a certain degree of lassitude in some areas.  Fire and blood were a frequent motif, along with the spoke-and-wheel arcs that represented the sun, or perhaps the entire celestial sphere: a precursor of the circled Celtic crosses that riddled the county hereabouts. 

A walker in the distance drew Jane’s attention to the footpaths. Two branches of the Saints’ Way converged nearby, and there were other routes that led away to Roche Rock in the west, jutting out from the descending slopes of the county’s spine, and Lanlivery to the south. Plenty of legends associated with both those places: Tregeagle again, of course, and Tristan and Isolde. Isolde had had a slightly happier fate in the Roche version of the legend than in Trewissick’s (Jane had dedicated an entire chapter of her PhD thesis to the interplay between the legends of Isolde’s life and death and the sea-sacrifices of ancient Cornwall), but not by much. Still, it wasn’t all death and devils and star-crossed lovers - there was the Blessing of St Vorck, and St Bryvyth’s Well, and the tale of The Three Farmers, the Pig, and the Piskie.

Jane frowned. The book had mentioned St Bryvyth’s Well, but the structure identified with it was clearly quite recent. No matter. That was undoubtedly a red herring - stories of a solitary saint defeating an invading army with holy well-water almost certainly had a cholera-shaped explanation behind them.

It started to rain. Jane pulled up the hood of her coat, and wondered which of the petroglyphs she should head for first - she didn’t want to spend any longer up on the moorland than she needed to. The wind gusted strongly. Further down the tor, a handful of grazing sheep and ponies started moving for cover. Beyond them, the so-called Cornish Alps dominated the skyline, greener now than when she’d been a child, but still distinctly human built.

 _We shape, and take,_ Jane thought to herself, _but when do we give back?_  An old land, bled dry and failing. Silenced mines, barren seas, impoverished farms. Tourism was all that kept the place afloat, and the visitors were resented all the more for it.  Give it a few more washed out summers, and it’d take more than a celebrity chef to reinvigorate the industry.

The sense of anger and oppression deepened as she descended the tor. _I’m not welcome here._  Without even planning to, she found herself heading back towards her car. She didn’t stop until she was barely a stone’s throw away, and only then because of the blackbird perched on the bog myrtle growing beside the kissing-gate.

Had she got what she’d come here for?

What _had_ she come here for?

Jane shook her head.  “Why _am_ I here?” she muttered. She’d been here before, had seen anything and everything of note over the course of her PhD research, all those years ago. _Brides of Sea and Stone: Fertility Rites of South West Britain._ A solid piece of work, albeit somewhat slight compared to the later works that she’d built her reputation as a scholar on.

She closed her eyes and turned on the spot, tracing a circle in her mind. Cycles of life and land, fickle fortunes, ill turns of fate.  The worship of saints named for even older gods, beacons lit against the darkness become twisted promises of safe haven to lure ships to their doom. A woman, woven into a thorny wooden cage and thrown to the sea, never truly a bride for a King, but an act of wedding the magics of ocean and land, a petition for storm-free skies and bountiful seas.  Cycles and balances.

There was a noise - a scuffling of claws on wood, and the heavy beating of wings. Jane opened her eyes to find the blackbird gone, flying off towards the far side of the field where it perched on the line of the hedge.  Jane followed. They’d been part of the ancient earthworks once, those hedges had, protecting the settlement against the terrors of the Dark.

“Hmph.”  That ridiculous library book had clearly seeped into her subconscious already. Jane wouldn’t normally have given such superstitious mental weight to such a commonplace word as ‘dark’.   Wishing she’d brought gloves as well as a raincoat, Jane hurried towards the break in the hedge-line.  The rain was falling heavier now, the wind throwing it sideways.  But the shelter she’d hoped to find in the lee of the stone wall was already occupied, by the same walker she’d seen earlier.

And before then, too.

She was facing the man from yesterday. Not Rowe, but the other one: the one who’d brought the storm.

“Oh, _hell!_ ” Jane swore, unable to tear her gaze away.

The man smiled. His face transformed completely.

“Hello, Jane,” Will said.

 

* * *

 

 **Part IV: At the heart of the circle**  

 

“Once,” Will began, as they stood once more atop the tor, “everyone knew that there were three powers in the land.”

Jane listened silently as Will told her of the Light and the Dark, the two powers of the High Magic, and the Wild Magic that was ruled by neither side. Of great battles, fought and won and sometimes lost, in the company of mortal heroes both legendary and long forgotten. Of subtle, silent struggles, where the balance hung on the smallest human choice.  She had heard and read of such things countless times before - her whole career revolved around the interactions between individuals and archetypes, myths grown of human fears and fallibilities - but unlike any other, this tale felt one hundred percent _real_.  Right from the start, it was very clear to her that he was an integral part of it. The unease she’d felt earlier, the feeling of being an unwanted interloper, had disappeared entirely…and seemingly at his bidding. In its place was a weighty sense of long aeons of absence, of all the years this place had waited for Will, or someone like him, to return.  If the wind over the stones could speak, it would surely be whispering words of welcome now.  And then there was the blackbird, which had accompanied them all the way back to the top of the tor, before vanishing in a blaze of golden-white mist when the first ray of sunlight broke through the clouds. Jane could’ve kicked herself for not spotting the link between Nanskilly and Celli Gadarn before then. It had even been sitting on a myrtle branch, for heaven’s sake!

But as Will’s history unfolded, all her thoughts of the moment faded away. She was _there,_ it seemed, witnessing the victory that had once been won from almost this very spot.  She could see the embattled defenders of this place, channelling the ancient powers of land and sky against the invaders from across the sea, who were themselves thralls to a greater enemy still.  She saw the darkness enveloping the land, the beacon-fires failing… and then two figures, standing hand in hand mere paces from where she stood, working under the guidance of a tall, cloaked man. A great light bloomed between them, rising high into the air before it spilled out to the four corners of the compass, and then into a complexity of tendrils, dancing and weaving, creating a symphony of starlight.

“It was the least of the great workings of the Light,” Will said, as he finished.

If that had been the least of what his kind could do… then why hadn’t they intervened more in this century? Rowe had certainly tried to, and everything she’d seen back in the village seemed to suggest he’d done _something_ with the magic he’d let loose.

Jane cast Will a doubtful look. “I don’t know that I understand what I saw just then… but Rowe, the man I saw in Trewissick yesterday. He was trying something similar, wasn’t he?” Having seen what had been done at Helman Tor in the past, Jane was certain that Rowe’s work in the harbour had called on the same underlying laws of magic, whatever they might be.

Will cut to the root of her misgivings. “It was different back then. The world was a different place. Magic was closer to your lives, bound more tightly to the workings of the physical world. But using it doesn’t come without consequences, especially where the free will of those we protect is concerned. I’ve been a part of choices that I…”  He trailed off, looking troubled.  “Oh, Jane.”   

The sun had gone in again.  Inside Jane’s coat pocket, her phone began to vibrate vigorously.

Absently, Jane reached for it, and held it to her ear.  “Yes?” she said, not entirely sure whether she was addressing the caller, or Will.

“Oh Jane, thank god!” said the voice at the other end of the line.

A sudden chill ran through her. It was Nick’s voice, she was sure of it, but not as she’d ever heard him before. 

“Please say you’re near, you-” he said, before his voice was lost to static. “-get back to Nanskilly as soon-”

The clear sense of panic in his words was enough to spur her into action. “Nick, you’re breaking up,” Jane said, casting an apologetic grimace at her old friend as explanation for the interruption. “What’s happened?”

“ -it’s Addie, she- … -can’t get to- … - _help_ us, _please_!”

“Okay, I’m on my way. Half an hour min, but I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

But Nick wasn’t finished. “The stone, it’s- ... Jane? _Jane_ ! Did you get that? _Please_ tell me you- … -owe, and I can’t …”

The phone cut out. She pulled it away from her cheek, but there was no longer any reception at all, not even for emergency calls.

“It’s already started, hasn’t it?” Will said. “At Maenventon.”

“Yes.” Jane didn’t bother asking him how he knew.

 

* * *

 

Jane didn’t argue when Will suggested that he be the one to drive, nor when she realised they were doing over sixty on the narrow, winding roads, barely compensating for the bends. Strangely, she’d never felt safer.

The Light and the Dark, locked in a battle that had raged for millennia… but what happened next, _after_ the battle was won? No-one ever thought to ask _that_ question.  But there they were: the forces of the Dark had lost, and humanity had won the right to forge its own path, within the natural laws and orders of the High Magic and the Wild. But where the earlier powers had either ruled or cajoled to keep the wild magic in check, preserved and propitiated… well, on that score it seemed that the entire world had fallen decidedly short. 

“You no longer fear the Dark, nor should you,” Will said as they left St Austell behind them. “Fear yourselves?” He shrugged. “Only as much as you deserve. But magic gone is not magic forgotten, and magic gone can - under the right conditions - be brought _back_ . Can be _compelled_. Not an easy thing to do, and the wild magic will always fight such compulsions, but that can be end enough for the unscrupulous.”

“Is that what you think is happening?” Jane asked. Outside the car, the weather was growing worse. Mist shrouded the road ahead, and there were shadows in the sky that she’d made a conscious choice not to examine too closely. “That someone’s using the wild magic just to cause chaos?”

Will gave a bitter laugh. “That, I could just about deal with. This is something worse.”

“What do you mean?”

“We banished the powers of the Dark. Drove them outside of time, never to return.  But the Wild Magic is _wild._ It doesn’t follow the High Magic’s rules. Roused to its full ferocity and focused on a single cause, its strength is practically boundless.  Whether the agent of the Dark can control its force scarcely matters - unless we intervene, the wild magic will ride roughshod over Cornwall today, fracturing the fabric of reality and shattering the Doors of Time.”

“You’re saying the Dark could come _back_ , aren’t you?”

Will answered with a nod, downshifting the car into third as the junction with the Tregiskey road loomed out of the mist. They had less than a mile to go.   “Trust me, we don’t want that to happen.”

“But you can stop it, right?”

“I know what needs to be done,” he said softly.

Jane eased back in her seat. “Good. That’s good. So I just need to worry about Addie and Nick then. I know you _said_ no-one would hurt them, but I’ll be a lot happier when I’ve seen that for myself.”  Knowing that the Wild Magic was being forced into action was one thing, but Will had been rather cagey about the specifics of what was actually happening, and how her young colleagues would manage to stay safe.  Then, a new thought occurred to her, and she frowned.  No-one hurting them didn’t preclude them hurting themselves… or being hurt by some _thing._ And knowing what _needed_ to be done wasn’t the same as being confident of doing it, either. She glanced across at Will, and found him staring intently at the road. As if aware of her regard, he slowed the car, pulled it into a passing place, and turned off the engine.

The silence was damning.

“Well?” Jane prompted.

Will shook his head. “Everything in my power, I will do. But I think you’ve already guessed that it’ll be less than you’d hoped for. I can get us close, and I can keep us safe. I can put my life and power in your hands, but the will to do this, and the work itself, have to be yours alone.

Jane inhaled sharply, the air hissing past her clenched teeth. “ _You_ sent that dream, didn’t you? Led me by the hand, so you could show me what you wanted me to see? Hell, I’m forty-nine years old, Will! You could have just _talked_ to me!”

He shook his head, and Jane could see apology and regret on his face. “There wasn’t time. There _isn’t_ time!  Yes, you’ve seen what you needed to, to save this world, and your friends. But all of this can only happen if we get there soon.”  He sighed deeply, and closed his eyes.  “And I’m very much afraid that we may already be too late.

A chill ran the length of Jane’s spine. He expected her to save the whole damn world, and he was giving up _now?_  “Will?”

“Yes?”

“Keep driving.”

He murmured an apology, and turned the key in the ignition again. The engine growled immediately back into life, but the car itself refused to move. Will swore, checked he was in gear, but nothing he tried made any difference at all.

Jane growled in frustration, then remembered the OS map Nick had left in the glove box. She pulled it out and searched for Nanskilly.  “There’s a footpath not far from here. It runs just below the lower boundary of the gardens. There’ll be a fence, of course, but I’ve got a pair of secateurs in the...” 

Outside the car, a rust-red horse galloped noisily past, dragging the ruins of a vintage carriage in its wake. Jane fell silent as it passed right through a five-bar steel gate without slowing, closely followed by a shapeless flood of nettles and a lone Roman legionary. “Will…?”

“Bring the secateurs,” he said.

 

* * *

 

They were in sight of Nanskilly now, but the storm was all about them.  Jane held fast to Will’s hand, struggling to keep from being torn away. “Is there nothing we can do?” she shouted.

“Not from this distance!” He fought his way forwards another stride, frustration clear in every aspect of his being. “And if I try to _force_ a path through… Jane, the agent of the Dark will seize his chance right then and there. The Wild Magic will have me, will twist anything I try, and the Dark will have clear passage back into this world.  I’m not strong enough to stop them, not alone.”

“But surely there are others?”

Will shook his head. “The others of the Light… they fought, and won, and found their peace. I can’t call them back from that easily. I’m not certain I could do it at all!”

“You’re not saying we’ve lost, are you?”

Will didn’t answer right away. “Only the Wild Magic itself can alter the course of things now.” 

There was a gleam in his eyes as he stood strong against the storm, unmoved, unmoving.  Compassion radiated off him, but it wouldn’t be enough, any more than he himself would have been enough. He needed her still, Jane realised. And even if he’d never _demand_ it of her… he knew.  He knew _her_. Knew she had a daughter, and the wits to understand, and the spirit to do what was needed.

Tethys had known, too.

“You didn’t send me that dream, did you?” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

Will looked away.

 _Come to me,_ the goddess had said. And she’d promised a blessing, of sorts, at a price that Jane understood all too well.

She firmed her jaw, and made her choice.  For Agnes, for Nick and Addie, for the whole damn world. And maybe even for him.    “So you can’t get us to Maenventon. Can you get us to Kemare Head, instead?”

 

* * *

 

They’d found everything they needed on their way to the coast.  Blooms of wild montbretia, bright orange against the green. Storm-tossed mussel shells, clinging to a ragged strip of kelp.  A scattering of soft, black feathers. Thin branches of hawthorn and rowan, now woven with all the rest into a loose crown upon her head.

Jane took off her coat, and then her shoes and socks. There was a sense of breathless anticipation in her chest, of electricity in the air.  Beneath her toes, the grass felt springy and warm. She followed it to the cliff’s edge and the furious ocean, watched over by the dark shapes of the standing stones.  

Will came up beside her. Almost reluctantly, he handed her his pocket-knife. “You don’t have to go through with this.”

“If not me, then who?”

“If not you, then no-one.”

Jane stared up at the sky, and laughed wryly. The rain was biting cold and hard on her cheeks, and if she stayed out in it much longer she’d be soaked to the skin. There was no choice about that part, whatever she did next. “‘No-one’ isn’t good enough, Will.”

“There’s still hope.”

“So you said, but nowhere near enough of it. You’ve shown me what the Dark can do! I have a daughter, Will. She hates this world passionately at times, but she’s doing her damnedest to fix it. And Addie, and Nick - I’m responsible for them, too. So yes, I’m afraid… but all the alternatives are _so_ much worse. I can’t stand aside and do nothing! This storm will find me, and there’s nowhere left to run…”

Will pulled her into his arms. “I’ll be with you, Jane. The whole time, I’ll be right there beside you.”

 “It’ll hurt though, won’t it? Dying. Down there.” She lifted onto her tiptoes and gazed down at the sea and the rocks.

“As badly as living does,” he whispered.

And really, that was all she needed to hear. Nothing in life was easy, but you did what you had to, for the people you loved.  Aaron had taught her that. 

“Then I can do this,” she murmured back. “Only… you’re sure I’ll get it right?  I mean… I can feel _something_ here, just like you said I would, but I’d hate to get the rest of it wrong.”

Surprisingly, Will laughed. “No-one ever knows what to do, not really,” he admitted. “Certainly not when it comes to forgotten, ancient rites. What matters most is what’s in your heart, and believe me, you’ve no reason to doubt yourself there.”

 _Agnes,_ Jane thought. _This is for you._ Filled with determination, and the ferocity of a mother’s love for her child, she drew Will’s blade across the palm of her hand.  He took the knife back from her and matched her action with his own, before clasping her hand in what might or might not have been a gesture of farewell.

Something burst into life inside of her. Jane took a deep breath, and started back towards the stones. The route she had to take between them was already fixed in her mind, marked with sea-glass, leaf and briar. She made a knotted circle of it, interwoven with her prayers, until she was sure it held everything that was needed.  She was a woman born of earth and water, heart-spirit of fire, breath of the sky. The result, when she’d finished, was both like and unlike the inscriptions she’d seen on the Maenventon stone, and the protective wards that had once been worked at Helman Tor.  She wasn’t the first to do this - that had been the woman later mythologised as Isolde, uniting the Wild Magic of earth and sea and sky into a protective force to spare the land she loved from the Dark - but she’d done it just as well, she thought. Perhaps, she wouldn’t even be the last.

On the clifftop, Will stood waiting for her.

Jane felt a sudden flare of power. It was time. Behind her, a shaft of lightning struck the tallest of the stones and a smell of ozone filled the air.  She was one with the magic of earth and sky; could carry its power to the depths of the sea.

She was ready.

Jane broke into a run, trusting her momentum to carry her through the point when her courage would inevitably fail.  Will was beside her then, a falling shadow in the storm.  After that, there were only the rocks and the water, and the pain, the darkness, and the light.

 

* * *

 

**Part V: Power of the Greenwitch**

 

 _Jane,_ Tethys sang, and the whole sea sang with her. _Jane, my daughter, my bright, brave fool._

 _...fooooool,_ echoed the sea.

Jane could taste it: salt and death and fury, and very little else.  _Help us!_ she pleaded.

 _Oh, no,_ Tethys said.

_...no, no, no..._

_That is_ not _why you came to me, Jane._  The goddess' voice held all the irresistible pressures of the deeps. _You came because you were always_ meant _to be mine. Did you never wonder? Never sense the truth of it? The fear that kept you so far from your truest place, locked ever to the pulsing tides and not the deeps? Were you not stirred by the Greenwitch, again and again and again? Each and every time she woke? You were promised to me, Jane._

_...promised, promised, promised…_

_Will?_ Jane tried, then _Will!_ again, but her words went nowhere. _But you said you’d be with me!_ she thought, almost despairing.  He’d promised her he would.

So she decided she’d believe him, whether she could sense him there with her or not.

 _Tethys!_ she sang back at the sea, _Tethys, please, I have a daughter of my own!_

The ocean waters heaved, tumbling Jane's senses.

 _She is nothing to me,_ Tethys said.

_Is she not? It was love of her that sent me to you. Human love, Tethys. Without it, none of us would worship you at all. If we did not love, did not care… who then would beg compassion of the Sea?_

_ARROGANT MORTAL. WHO BEGS IT OF ME NOW?_

Tethys _did_ have a point, Jane supposed. _You are timeless, great Tethys,_ she pleaded. _You are timeless, but we mortals are_ not _. We do not see with your vision, even when we doom ourselves. You are a power of change and permanence, Tethys, a tide that will break us all down eventually. Your time_ will _come again. You know it will._

 _It will come now, if I wish it,_ Tethys hissed. _That, too, has been promised me._

Another piece of the puzzle slid into place. Rowe’s work in Trewissick harbour? Had he _needed_ Tethys as an ally, or had he been pre-empting her own quest? Jane decided on the former, if only because it was the only hope she had.

_He’s an agent of the Dark, Tethys. He’s using you!_

_Using me? Using me! Foolish child, you know_ not _of what you speak. You it is who are used. Used, and endangered, then abandoned and forgotten!_

 _Will hasn’t left me,_ Jane insisted.

_Your ‘Will’ has betrayed you.  The Light has betrayed you. I can show you, if you wish it._

_He did what he had-_

_Perhaps I_ will _show you, whether you wish it or not,_ Tethys interrupted.

And suddenly, Jane remembered.

She remembered all of it.

If she still lived, if she still had a body, Jane would have wept.

 _He used you,_ Tethys wheedled. _They_ all _used you. He’s using you still._

 _I know,_ Jane agreed. _But I still chose to do this. And I’d choose it again._

_Why?_

_Because I am the Greenwitch, Tethys,_ she sang, and she knew it to be true. _I bring you my life, and the life of the land. I bring you my life, and the life of the sky. I bring you my life, and the life of the sea. I bring you my life, and the fire of the stars._

The ocean trembled. They were deep, now. Very, very deep.

 _I gave_ you _life,_ Tethys answered. _It was_ _always_ _mine to take._

 _My life is yours, and freely given,_ Jane sang.  _I wish you joy of it, Tethys, for as long as the oceans last. For unless you help us now, there will_ never _come another._

Had the goddess understood her warning? Jane could only hope.

 _Yes,_ Tethys said.  _You_ are _mine, Jane. My Greenwitch. You always were._

And all the force of the ocean took hold of her, until only the Greenwitch was left.

 

* * *

 

From Penare to Trenarren, the sea raged against the land.  The sandbanks shifted, rock pools were scoured, and stones torn from cliffs and walls alike. Bitter spray filled the air, promising a lingering toll for less hardy plants.  And beside a dilapidated breakwater, a mile or more north of the standing stones where she’d been born, a ragged figure bearing a heavy burden fought his way free of the sea.

 _Stay with me!_ the Greenwitch demanded. She softened the sand around his feet, wove clinging currents that tugged and pulled. No mere human could deny her will, not here. Here, where abject fishermen cast their lines from the silent thrust of rocks, and the iron tracks of the old railway rotted back to bloody sand. She’d killed this harbour out of spite, she remembered, silted it up years and years ago.

“I’m here, Jane,” the man said, somehow staggering free of her strength.  “Come back to me.”

She drew the waters up and flung them against him: a reminder that she was a daughter of Tethys, who came at no-one’s demand. But as the waves receded again, he stood there still, unmoved, clutching the body of a woman to his chest.

“ _Remember_ , Greenwitch!” he cried hoarsely.

But she remembered everything. She remembered all the secrets of the sea, all the ways of ocean things, the power and darkness and sheer creative fury of the magic of the wild.

She also remembered a child. A girl child, on the cusp of becoming. A girl who saw deeply in the depths, who loved the sea, and feared it.  She had faced darkness, this girl, had chosen a path of stubborn courage throughout.  She was all the innocent wisdom and kindness of youth, a heart that could encompass and calm the storm. 

She remembered another child. A child of her own.  And other children, other people, to whom she owed a duty of care.

Something shifted inside her. The seawater in her lungs blazed into fiery heat, burning through her chest and limbs, then up, up, up into the sky above.

“Will?”

“I’m here,” he murmured.

She clung on to him tightly, hollow and emptied of magic. Or was she?  Eyes closed, she _reached._ And there it was, spiralling all around her, in the harsh breath of the wind and the salt in the air. The thrumming potential of the sea, breaking and echoing against the land, from sandy coast to darkest depths, intertwined with the bright-rooted life of birds and trees and the creatures of the tides. She held _all_ of it, she realised.  She could do _anything_.

Except… there was another power at work, too. She could feel it, beyond the harbour to the west, where the mist was at its thickest. Nanskilly Gardens. The Maenventon Stone. Which wasn’t a stone at all, not any longer.

Jane pulled away from Will, and started towards the village. “It’s calling me,” she whispered. “The Well, it’s calling.”

“I know,” he said.  “You’re one of the Powers of the Wild Magic, now. It will draw you in, whether you wish it or not.”

Absently, she reached up to touch the tangled crown that was still woven into her hair.  Distrust flared in her heart.  The Well wasn’t the only power she could sense. He’d masked it well, Will had, but there was no mistaking the blazing of the Light behind his eyes. And all that mattered to the Light was to keep the Dark in check - oh, they claimed to care for the world and all of its innocents, but only to a point. And the Wild Magic? The Light cared _nothing_ for her at all.  So why _should_ she hold herself back? The Well was calling her, calling her to power.  All the Wild Magic was called, to a Rising that would last an eternity!

“Jane? Jane, you have to listen, you have to stop!”

Jane left him behind. The Old One was alone, and weak.  He couldn’t stop her if he tried.

 

* * *

 

The storm that had once held them back now carried her on.  Jane moved as the sea moves, and the wind: as a rippling in the leaves, salt on the air, shifting patterns in the rain. Nanskilly lay above and beneath her, lost in truth now.  Verdant growth spread unchecked across the landscape, haunted by beast and bird, and by creatures stranger still. Caught in amongst them, Jane could sense the souls of frantic, harried mortals, swept out of any semblance of their familiar world. And everywhere around her, there were birds.

She watched them for a while. They seemed almost unaware of her...almost, but not _quite,_ as if they were waiting for something, watching her in turn. Finches, sparrows, rooks and gulls, perched silent in the trees or tracing twisting spirals in the air.  Ahhh… not a spell that had any hold on her, but they were working something nonetheless.

Jane followed the currents to the heart of the storm. Maenventon. The stone had changed since she’d seen it last. It was still an eight-foot ring of rock, ridged and twisting and never quite circular, but the script was clearer now. The old spells shone fish-scale bright, sparking rainbows into the air, while the Latin counter-work lay dark and still, fogged by tendrils of power snaking in from the familiar figure that knelt slumped to one side. There were other forces at work, too, though they were still concealed from her vision. In the heart of the stone, what had once been a simple mud-filled void was now an unreflecting expanse, deep and gleaming with stars. 

The Well.

Slivers of her mortal knowledge rose to prominence in Jane’s mind: the folk-legends of changelings and healing associated with passage through a holed stone.  But who might have passed through it? And how many times?

Jane approached the stone on foot, passing through the outer wards as if they were nothing more than air. Rowe was the man on the ground, looking much the worse for wear. He’d made a conduit of himself, a weak thieving of power bled from beach and bird and bough, but whether he survived his working or not scarcely mattered any more. The Wild Magic was alive in this place now.

Leaving Rowe behind her, Jane crossed through the final layers of warding that surrounded the stone. They welcomed her through, clinging to her skin like a promise. And suddenly, she saw what had previously been concealed from her sight: Aderyn and Nick, alive and whole.  A delighted smile broke across her face. They were even _better_ than alive! Somehow - and Jane decided she’d figure that part out later - the pair of them had not only passed through the stone at least the once, but had also managed to wrest control of its magic away from Rowe. Everything would be _so_ much simpler for her now! It would still take careful guidance on her part to ensure that the forces she unleashed didn’t permit the slightest breach in time, but Nick and Addie had unwittingly laid the groundwork for that, too.  She opened her mouth to address them, but it was Addie who spoke first.

“Hello, Greenwitch,” she said without taking her eyes off the stone. “You’re early.”

 

* * *

 

“Early?” Of all the things that Addie might have said to her at this juncture, Jane would never have expected that.   

“Where is he, Jane?” Addie asked. On the far side of the stone, Nick’s face look pained.  

“Who?”

“The Old One, of course. The man who betrayed you to the sea.”  She turned, a hard smile on her face. There was a raven on her shoulder, Jane saw, and the still body of a blackbird at her feet. “I will see he pays for that, Jane.”

“You mean Will? Will doesn’t matter any more.” What _did_ matter was taking control of the situation before Addie lost her grip. It really wouldn’t do for the Wild Magic to come into its ascendance only to immediately face the full might of the Dark, unchecked by its erstwhile foe. Whatever instinctive knowledge Addie had drawn upon had clearly served her well, but no mere human could hope to control what was to come.  She moved closer to the stone, the Wild Magic coursing through her like a flood. 

Addie scowled. “He would have been useful, Jane. Where did you say you last saw him?”

“I left him in Pentewan. Why?”

The other woman’s tone softened. “Just look at what he did to you, Jane. Look what the _Light_ did to you! You’re a tool, nothing more than that. _Where is he? Where are you hiding him?_ ”

“I told you. He doesn’t matter. All that matters now is the Well.”  Jane raised her arms, summoning the magic in.  It was every sensation imaginable, faceted by every last aspect of nature. It flooded into her, strengthening her with every breath and every step she took.  “I know what to do with it,” she murmured, her spirit thundering inside her with all the fury of the sea.

But as much as she took in, there was something still held back. Jane pulled harder, trying to loosen the knots that held the magic fast, a net of icy starlight that had its source in the woman standing before her and the birds that waited without, and in the seven interwoven strands of darkness that now rose as one from out of the Well.

“Come,” Addie whispered, holding her hands cupped before her. Power spilled out from them like water.  “I have what you need, Greenwitch.” 

The net closed.

 

* * *

 

The Well was cold and dark. Or maybe it was simply herself that was blind, and frozen.

“I never intended this for _you_ , Jane.”

Addie’s voice, Jane thought. It was as cold and dark as everything else.

“This was to be the Old One’s role. You were supposed to live.” Addie chuckled. “Well, after a fashion.  Much as you are now, in fact. Oh, what a Greenwitch I’d have made of _you_!”

Jane struggled against the darkness as much as she could, a sense of dull horror in her heart, her mind growing numb.  Within the Well, the Wild Magic was a silent, implacable force - aspectless, and Wild no longer. And it wasn’t alone, either - Jane could sense the echoes of other magics, of other powers and times, drawn closer by every passage Aderyn had made.

It had been her from the start, Jane realised. “How could you do this?”

“You shouldn’t think I’m angry with you. I’ll have plenty of other opportunities once I’ve finished here, and the Dark returns to this world.”

“Will!” Jane gasped out.

“He won’t elude us long, and my masters will be glad to find another use for him.”  A wheedling note entered her voice, offering a hope that Jane found herself clinging to despite herself. “We could use him now, if you prefer. You could help me shape the world anew.”

It wasn’t enough of an offer, and Aderyn seemed to know it. “How else can you keep Agnes safe, Jane? Stop holding back!”

Addie was right, Jane decided. She _did_ need Will, after all.

 

* * *

 

They emerged from the well into chaos. The sky was a tumult of leaves and magic, drifting feathers, and rain. Eight spirals of power lashed all around them, directionless and raging. The Well was no longer still, but as wild as the sea.  All the power of Tethys was a part of it now.

But amidst the disorder, there was one patch of calm.  On the far side of the stone, where Nick had been standing frozen and witless by the force of Aderyn’s work, a second figure could now also be seen, silhouetted against a brightness that almost hurt to look at.  The Old One, no less alone than before, but _anything_ but weak.  The strength inside him was staggering.

He’d lied to her. He could have reached the stone alone with ease.

“You used me,” she murmured, Aderyn’s will forcing her closer.  In the distance, the great trees lining the slopes of the hill were simultaneously crumbling away to dust, and shrinking back to saplings.

Will raised his head, and held out his hands. “No,” he said. “I trusted you.” 

Jane seized hold of his wrists, wrapping the Wild Magic tight around him. The salt of her tears was sweet on her lips. “I’m sorry!”

“I’m not.”  He whispered a word in the language she had only recently come to know.

All of a sudden the net of darkness that constrained her was gone, and doing as Aderyn commanded was once again a choice instead of a necessity. Power flooded into her - Will’s power, the Light’s power.

Will smiled. “You remember what I showed you?”

Jane did.

Images blazed in her mind, the shapes of the wards and protections that would save them all. It would be enough, she hoped, to hold the Dark back. And then, using everything she had, she sent the Wild Magic back through the Maenventon Stone and shattered it.

 

* * *

 

The site was a wound of fallen trees, churned mud and stone against the hillside.  Jane knelt beside Addie’s battered body, wondering if she’d ever truly known her friend at all.

“Come on, Professor,” the police constable said. “She’s at peace now, and in good hands. Coroners'll be gentle with her.”

Jane shook her head, too numb not to answer honestly. “I don’t know.”

“Paramedics want to check you over, too. Bruises like that, it’s best to be sure.”

Taking hold of his proffered arm, Jane staggered stiffly back to her feet, then across the slope towards the ambulance waiting on the track. “Nick’s okay, right?” she asked the female paramedic.

“Oh, ‘e’s fine,” she said. “Don’t remember much, but there’s nothing else the mat-“

The paramedic froze, mid word, as Will stepped into view.  Jane glanced across at the policeman - he, too, was standing stock-still, caught in the act of picking his nose.

“How are you, Jane?” Will said.

She honestly wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. Heart-sore, and tired. I don’t know what to make of any of it.”

"Maybe that's for the best. You should take some time off. Go on sabbatical, maybe."

"Maybe I will," she said, then sighed. "Poor Nick. I'm sure Abdul will be happy to take him on, but he'll be miserable for months after losing what we thought we'd found here."

"Less of a problem than you'd suspect," Will said, spreading his fingers in front of the paramedic's face. "None of them will remember anything untoward.” 

A new thought occurred to her then. “Am I to forget it all too? Again?”

“Not this time,” he murmured.  “Besides, even if I wanted to do that, I’m not sure I could. You’re still the Greenwitch, Jane.”

Jane laughed, immeasurably reassured by his fallibility. “There’s not the slightest drop of magic left in me, Will!”

“Maybe not,” he agreed, “but there’s a lot of _you_ in the magic. Listen!”

Eyes closed, she did. And beneath the susurration of the wind, the mechanical humming of the ambulance engine, the rooks in the distance and a blackbird singing from a tree nearby, Jane realised she could also hear the sea: deep, timeless and eternal.

“-ter with him,” the paramedic finished, jarring Jane out of her thoughts.

Blinking stupidly, she looked around for Will, but he was nowhere to be seen.

She could still hear the sea, though.

She was certain she always would.


End file.
